Minor Point #1: Transparency Made Its Way to the TDA
It brings me great pleasure to be able to write that the TDA handled the scheduling of Fifth Night’s races with as much transparency, class and grace as could have been imagined. In hindsight, there wasn’t one element of the process that I would have changed in any manner, shape or form.
First, the backstory: Prior to Fifth Night, Orange Crush remained in the chase for the 2011 season title, but only by the very thinnest of threads. In order to win the title, they would have had to win the night, win one of those races in under 2:18 (to grab the tie-breaker from Reckoning) and have Reckoning lose in the first round. Any deviation from that script would have spelled the end of Orange Crush’s title chances.
There were three possible schedules that could have been picked for the night, the most intriguing of which featured an Orange Crush/Reckoning first round match-up.* Given that Orange Crush was an outstanding 6-1 against Reckoning during the last two years, that was the option they were hoping for. Actually, ‘Hoping for’ doesn’t go anywhere near far enough in descriptive abilities; they were desperately lusting after this option like a 15-year old boy after Megan Fox.
* Seven schedules are all made before the season and sealed in envelopes. Before each night of racing, one of the envelopes is picked detailing what teams will face what teams.
Knowing that if Reckoning and Orange Crush did, in fact, meet in the first round it could look a tad suspicious since the Orange Crush drivers had been quite boisterous about their desire to meet in the first round, TDA president Sherri Heckenast concocted a rather brilliant idea. Orange Crush owner Kenny Kasper would pick one of the remaining three schedules, Reckoning owner Brian Anderson would pick another and the remaining schedule would be the one used on Fifth Night. After the schedule had been announced, both Kasper and Anderson could open their respective envelopes to ensure complete and total transparency.
Orange Crush ultimately got the match-up they wanted with Reckoning in the first round (though it didn’t turn out exactly the way they’d hoped) and everyone else got the transparency that they have been clamoring for. How can you improve on that?
Minor Point #2: Jason Ritacco Was Right
There were a number of drivers who were vocal about the negative implications that door bars could have. I don’t recall anyone being more vocal on this issue than Bad Company’s Jason Ritacco. He brought it up at several drivers’ meetings, several other friendly get togethers and seemingly during every phone conversation I ever remember having with him.
His point and major fear, which I’ve heard often enough to be able to recite near verbatim, was that the addition of a door bar to a car could easily result in a situation where it would end up sticking out from the car like a spear. “And I’d much rather get hit in my driver’s door without a door bar than to race against a car with a door bar sticking out like a spear,” he’d say.
It only took ten night’s of racing for Ritacco’s fear to materialize. Fifth Night, after taking a hit, Mean Green Machines’ Gerritt “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt’s driver’s side door bar bent out and angled away from his car. Less than a minute later, Vanderbilt’s door bar pierced the driver’s door of Seek-N-Destroy’s Emil Looze, hitting him squarely in the ribs and sending him to the hospital.
Fortunately for all involved, Looze is recovering nicely with nothing more than some bruising to show for the incident. However, that said, this was the scariest incident of the season, far surpassing the Third Night door shot Orange Crush’s Johnny Ryan accidentally delivered to Damage, Inc’s Matt Wilson. This was a situation where only dumb luck prevented Looze from being stabbed in some soft tissue by the rogue door bar. Had the door bar hit Looze six inches further south, it’s entirely possible that he could have been killed.
In theory, I can see how door bars are a good idea; they put an extra barrier between the driver and the bumpers of the other cars on the track. However, that assumes that the drivers are applying the door bars in the best and most proper way… and that isn’t always the case.
While looking at Wilson’s car after he was hit by Ryan, what impressed me was that he didn’t appear to be using any washers on the bolts securing his door bar. When his door bar pulled away from the car, it just ripped right out without having any of the extra hold that an inch and a half by an inch and a half washer might have given it.
While investigating Vanderbilt’s door bar, I learned that he hadn’t actually bolted the door bar to his car, but rather he had welded it to the outer skin of sheet metal.* Since sheet metal is substantially thinner than the metal of the door bar, it’s not hard to understand why the front end popped out. Just imagine gluing a 2×4 to an enormous sheet of paper and then expecting the paper not to rip when you smack it (or the 2×4) as hard as you can.
* I want to stress that neither Wilson nor Vanderbilt did anything illegal or wrong with the way they attached their door bars; they followed the guidelines set by the league to a T.
While Looze’s ribs might disagree, both he and the TDA caught a very major break Fifth Night with the way his injury unfolded. I understand the principle behind the door bar—it ostensibly creates additional driver safety—however, the fact that this now mandatory safety equipment could also have been the cause of the worst injury ever suffered in the TDA’s history seems like it should put the matter up for a comprehensive off-season re-examination.
Minor Point #3: Reckoning Had A Pretty Damn Good Year
How good was Reckoning’s year? Reckoning ended the season 12 points ahead of the second place team. The second place team was only 10 points ahead of the last place team.
Yes, you read that correctly; there was more separation between first and second place than between second place and eighth place.
Also worth noting: Reckoning’s Chris McGuire was so happy about winning the championship that he never flipped off the camera in any of the group celebration shots.
Minor Point #4: High Risk’s Numbers Were Great
I have an extensive background in graphic design, photography and the software that goes along with those fields. As such, I very rarely have an opportunity to discuss anything that would normally fall into my day-to-day life when writing this column. (Sure, most people choose to write about topics they know about; not me. I found something that I knew almost nothing about and dove in head first).
I’ve long fancied writing a column on the color schemes of the different teams—Bad Company’s 2011 color scheme was one of the best I’ve ever seen—but there just wasn’t enough material there to write a full article. Despite the fact that the exterior of the cars is all anyone in the stands ever sees, no one on the teams seems to care much about how they appear.
Fifth Night featured the addition of two new teams, Double-D Destroyers and High Risk. As team 10, High Risk’s numbers all began with the number 10. Connecting the numbers with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the High Risk ladies decided to make the zero in the ‘10’ from the Breast Cancer Ribbon. I saw this and smiled. It was a great graphic design choice that tied in beautifully with the message at hand. And for this decision, I thank them. After 16 columns and four months writing about the demos, I finally—FINALLY—get to write about something in my area of expertise!
Minor Point #5: It Was Cold
How cold was it Fifth Night? Stranglehold put away their convertible beauty car and brought out a sedan.
How cold was it Fifth Night? The crowd longed for Fred Sibley to come out and melt a car simply for the four minutes of heat it would produce.
How cold was it Fifth Night? Women kept asking to stand next to Ryan Decker because they’d heard how hot he was.
How cold was it Fifth Night? People in the stands were buying coffee just to keep their hands warm.*
How cold was it Fifth Night? Drivers were actually hoping that their engines would catch on fire.
* For the record, I actually have done this.
Minor Point #6: Best Comment of the Year
As I was walking in the stands prior to the night of racing, I overheard a woman ask her male companion, “Wait, someone’s banging someone for boobs?”
Kind of.
Minor Point #7: Wally Hartung Got A Lot More Than He Bargained For
I’m going to be honest, knowing that the subtitle for Fifth Night was ‘Banging for Boobs’, I fully expected to hear a lot of comically offensive chatter about it in the pits. To my extreme surprise, I heard very few sentiments of this nature. Minor Point #6 was the best of the bunch and that was courtesy of a fan.
There was one story involving a driver that is worth sharing.
During the drivers’ meeting, Stranglehold’s Wally Hartung mentioned off-handedly that he wanted a preview of the upcoming boob races. And then Hartung—and the rest of the drivers—got flashed… by a mid-fifties, male spectator racer who pulled up the front of his shirt to the shoulder and began seductively rubbing his belly for Hartung. I don’t think Hartung will be asking for anymore flashes in the near future.
Minor Point #8: Jason Twite and I Did A Play-by-Play Commentary on the Bad Company vs. Full Throttle Race
Between Fourth and Fifth Night, the TDA’s defacto everything guy, Jason Twite, asked if I’d like to do a commentary with him for one of the Fifth Night races as a bonus feature on the DVD; he’d do the play-by-play and I’d do color. It sounded like a lot of fun, so I said yes. If nothing else, I figured I could start out by saying something like, “Team Demolition. That means there’s a bunch of different drivers on these teams.”
We chose to do our commentary on the Bad Company and Full Throttle race in the first round … which turned out to be one of the most non-descriptive races of the season. So non-descriptive that at one point I’d been quiet for so long that Twite turned to me and asked, “You want to add anything, Chris?” And I couldn’t.
I’ll be curious to hear your opinions on our performances. Please enjoy the utter bafflement on my face that you’ll see when Twite throws the segment intro to me. Having no idea that I would be required to actually, you know, speak during the introduction I was completely unprepared to have to answer anything, even if it was as easy a question as, “Are you ready for this?”
Minor Point #9: The Beauty Contest is the Wild, Wild West of Safety
I feel kind of like a over-cautious parent here, mentioning yet another issue with safety in the same column as my above door bar missive, but here we are.
I’ve commented before on the attitude displayed by the different teams’ beauty cars. Orange Crush’s limousine in particular could terrify long time members of Hell’s Angels. It’s loud, it’s fast and there are people hanging on everywhere. If I saw that orange beast heading towards me on the street, I’d either soil myself or instantly curl into a fetal position… at which point I’d then soil myself.
Fifth Night, Mean Green Machines’ beauty car came out onto the track with a speed and ferocity normally reserved for car chases in Jason Statham movies. I mean, that thing was moving. And there were people clinging on for dear life on every available inch of real estate.
I’ve been out on a beauty car before a couple of times and there are two bits of information that I wish to pass along to all would be beauty contest participants.
1) Avoid sitting on the passenger side of the car
2) If you chose to sit on something, make sure there isn’t a whole lot of black, sticky gunk on the seat area. If there is, you will ruin your pants and, more comically, your butt will stick to everything else it touches for the rest of the night. Just hope and pray that Reckoning’s “Speedy” Steve Vollbrecht will not spot you like this,
The second point is self-explanatory; it’s the first point that I want to highlight here.
Because of the physics of the matter—the cars come out of the turn 4 track entrance and make a left turn to the wall—when the car makes its left turn, anyone sitting on the passenger side of the car is going to feel a pull away from the car.* The faster the car is going, the stronger the pull on the person will be. The people on the driver’s side of the cars don’t have these same issues because their inertia, if it does anything, will simply push them into the car itself.
* This is the concept of inertia. Since I’m sure most everyone here is familiar with Newton’s First Law of Motion—objects at rest stay at rest and objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force—I don’t have to go into too much details on this.
It may be a stupid fear, but watching Mean Green Machines’ beauty car roar out of the pits and pull a hard left turn, I couldn’t help but think that we’re a night or two away from someone tumbling out of the beauty car and injuring themselves in the process. Sure, it’d be funny if the car was going slowly, but with the acceleration and speed we’re starting to see, it seems like it could be dangerous. Something as simple as not allowing people to sit on the passenger side of the car would make me feel a lot better.
I’ll have to bring this up to Jason Ritacco the next time I talk to him and see where he stands on this issue. It may hinge on whether or not the beauty car has a door bar.
Minor Point #10: Upcoming Things
Oh, sure, the TDA season is over, but that doesn’t mean that things are going to grind to a halt.
For starters, I am going to keep writing columns for the teamdemo.com web-site. Now that the off-season is here, I’m finally going to be able to touch on all the topics that I wasn’t able to get to during the season. Topics like: A review of the Race Freaks presentation of the TDA, A look into the women’s demo—did you know that Megan Decker has won several demos at Sycamore? Now you do—an investigation into bias, my awards for the season, a re-examination of the pre-season questions I highlighted for each team and a look forward to the 2012 season amongst others.
In addition to the columns, recently retired driver, Steve Gursky Jr. and I are starting a weekly podcast about the demos that you’ll be able to find on iTunes and other websites come November; it will, unfortunately, not be available on the teamdemos.com website. The podcast itself will be a professionally produced and entertaining look into the world of the demos and whatever else grabs our attention. Each episode is going to have a guest too, so if you have any suggestions for people for us to interview, feel free to send them in this direction.
Our first guest will be Orange Crush’s Ryan Bleuer. Mean Green Machines’ Ryan Decker and Stranglehold’s Michael Noble and Mel Noble Jr. will follow. Orange Crush’s Johnny Ryan is (hopefully) slated after that. More details about the podcast will follow as they become available.
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Megan Decker had won ‘a demo championship’ at Sycamore. It has since been corrected.